February 5, 2013--Chuck Hagel
Many on the left who are supporters of Barack Obama are blaming senators John McCain, Lindsey Graham, Jim Inhofe, and Ted Cruz for unfairly skewering Defense Secretary nominee Chick Hagel during his confirmation hearing.
It is claimed that they made up stuff (Inhofe and Cruz) or badgered Hagel (amigos McCain and Graham) as if he were a perpetrator being cross examined on the witness stand--"Yes or no," McCain asked when pressing Hagel to say if he on reflection would now support the surge in Iraq. "Just answer the question--yes or no." When Hagel attempted to say it was more complicated than that, McCain dismissively cut him off.
And Graham over and over hectored Hagel to name one senator who had been influenced by lobbyists for Israel. (The right answer--Graham; pretty much all of his colleagues; and when he was a senator, Hegel himself.)
Also, progressives insist, Inhofe was not telling the truth when he asserted that Iran was supporting Hagel's nomination while newly-elected Texas senator Cruz defamed Hagel by playing a scratchy al Jazerra tape of an interview with Hagel that, Cruz insinuated, suggested he was an enemy of Israel's.
While this critique of Hagel's treatment is generally true, what my friends on the left are insufficiently acknowledging is that Hagel performed terribly, and not just when confronting these hostel former colleagues. He bumbled his way through even friendly questions.
He refused to discuss the influence of the Israel lobby on Congress and couldn't manage to keep Obama's Iran strategy straight--repeatedly confusing "containment" (not the policy) with "prevention" (the policy) with regard to nuclear weapons, needing to be helped by his staff and Democrats on the committee to correct the record; and he did a woeful job when attempting to restate his position on Israel.
To bad. Because Obama and the United States need someone just like Hagel to lead the Pentagon as our government and the military transition to a dramatically new orientation that rejects the neo-con idea of preemptive war and adjusts to the kind of actual post-Cold-War threats we now face on at least three continents.
Rather than playing gotcha or relitigating the wars in Iraq and Vietnam (McCain's enduring obsessions), the committee could have performed a public service by pressing Hagel about his going-forward views--what have we learned from the failures of 9/11; our interventions in Iraq, Afghanistan, and, if we must, Vietnam and even the Cold War; and what are the lessons about how to make America safe from the new asymmetrical threats that we now face from global terrorism.
As I understand Hegel's views, if given half a chance, he would have been able to speak sagely about how to deal with Iran short of bombing them back to the Stone Age (not actually possible with conventional weapons); about how to use our leverage to press Israel to take a more balanced approach to how to live more peacefully in their contested neighborhood; how to think strategically about bilaterally reducing the number of nuclear weapons in the world (including much of our now obsolete stockpile); and how to sanely cut the defense budget as one contribution to reducing our paralyzing national debt.
But we heard very little of this. Instead, those in the media are still talking about John McCain's inner demons and Ted Cruz, after one week in the Senate, already running for vice president in 2016 and how Lindsey Graham's performance was more about his upcoming reelection campaign than any real interest in Israel.
Too bad Hagel came off as such a disappointment. To be so ill prepared and ill informed is a part of the story and worrisome in a potential Secretary of Defense. But the real missed opportunity was a substantial debate about the future of national security and how to deal with dangers right now in the wider Islamic world and potentially, over the next decades, in Asia.
It is claimed that they made up stuff (Inhofe and Cruz) or badgered Hagel (amigos McCain and Graham) as if he were a perpetrator being cross examined on the witness stand--"Yes or no," McCain asked when pressing Hagel to say if he on reflection would now support the surge in Iraq. "Just answer the question--yes or no." When Hagel attempted to say it was more complicated than that, McCain dismissively cut him off.
And Graham over and over hectored Hagel to name one senator who had been influenced by lobbyists for Israel. (The right answer--Graham; pretty much all of his colleagues; and when he was a senator, Hegel himself.)
Also, progressives insist, Inhofe was not telling the truth when he asserted that Iran was supporting Hagel's nomination while newly-elected Texas senator Cruz defamed Hagel by playing a scratchy al Jazerra tape of an interview with Hagel that, Cruz insinuated, suggested he was an enemy of Israel's.
While this critique of Hagel's treatment is generally true, what my friends on the left are insufficiently acknowledging is that Hagel performed terribly, and not just when confronting these hostel former colleagues. He bumbled his way through even friendly questions.
He refused to discuss the influence of the Israel lobby on Congress and couldn't manage to keep Obama's Iran strategy straight--repeatedly confusing "containment" (not the policy) with "prevention" (the policy) with regard to nuclear weapons, needing to be helped by his staff and Democrats on the committee to correct the record; and he did a woeful job when attempting to restate his position on Israel.
To bad. Because Obama and the United States need someone just like Hagel to lead the Pentagon as our government and the military transition to a dramatically new orientation that rejects the neo-con idea of preemptive war and adjusts to the kind of actual post-Cold-War threats we now face on at least three continents.
Rather than playing gotcha or relitigating the wars in Iraq and Vietnam (McCain's enduring obsessions), the committee could have performed a public service by pressing Hagel about his going-forward views--what have we learned from the failures of 9/11; our interventions in Iraq, Afghanistan, and, if we must, Vietnam and even the Cold War; and what are the lessons about how to make America safe from the new asymmetrical threats that we now face from global terrorism.
As I understand Hegel's views, if given half a chance, he would have been able to speak sagely about how to deal with Iran short of bombing them back to the Stone Age (not actually possible with conventional weapons); about how to use our leverage to press Israel to take a more balanced approach to how to live more peacefully in their contested neighborhood; how to think strategically about bilaterally reducing the number of nuclear weapons in the world (including much of our now obsolete stockpile); and how to sanely cut the defense budget as one contribution to reducing our paralyzing national debt.
But we heard very little of this. Instead, those in the media are still talking about John McCain's inner demons and Ted Cruz, after one week in the Senate, already running for vice president in 2016 and how Lindsey Graham's performance was more about his upcoming reelection campaign than any real interest in Israel.
Too bad Hagel came off as such a disappointment. To be so ill prepared and ill informed is a part of the story and worrisome in a potential Secretary of Defense. But the real missed opportunity was a substantial debate about the future of national security and how to deal with dangers right now in the wider Islamic world and potentially, over the next decades, in Asia.
posted by Steven Zwerling at
5:14 AM
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